Meaning
The picture is in the lines: a whole line at the top and at the bottom, the jaws, and four broken lines between them, the open mouth. 頤 means the jaw or the cheeks, and from there to nourish; the trigrams add movement below, thunder, and stillness above, the mountain, as the lower jaw moves and the upper stays still. The Judgment promises good fortune to the correct and then turns the question on the reader: look at what is being nourished, and at how one seeks nourishment for oneself.
The Image names the mouth's two traffic: words go out and food comes in, so the superior man watches his words and is moderate in what he eats and drinks. In our reading 頤 is nourishment in the widest sense, of the body, of others and of character. It reads the same upside down, and its opposite, every line flipped, is hexagram 28, where too much rests on too little.
The lines
The lower lines seek their food the wrong way. The first leaves its own "efficacious tortoise", in Legge's English, to gape at someone else's meal; the second looks down for nourishment, or up to the heights, and either way goes wrong; the third acts against the way of nourishing altogether. The upper lines look downward to feed others instead. The fourth gazes down like a tiger, intent and unwavering, and is not blamed; the fifth departs from the usual course and keeps firm. The top line is the source of nourishment for all, in a place of danger, and the great stream can be crossed.
Within 頤 lies 坤, hexagram 2; its pair and opposite is 大過, hexagram 28.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 頤 when the year, month and day leave 7 on eight, which puts 艮 mountain above, and the same total with the hour added leaves 4, which puts 震 thunder below. Which line moves depends on what the whole total leaves on six, and each line turns the figure into a different hexagram:
- Line 1 (初九) moving: becomes 23 剝 Bō, Stripping Away
- Line 2 (六二) moving: becomes 41 損 Sǔn, Decrease
- Line 3 (六三) moving: becomes 22 賁 Bì, Adornment
- Line 4 (六四) moving: becomes 21 噬嗑 Shì Kè, Closing the Jaws
- Line 5 (六五) moving: becomes 42 益 Yì, Increase
- Line 6 (上九) moving: becomes 24 復 Fù, Return
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 2 坤 Kūn, Earth's Yielding. Everyone born in the same lunar day and double hour has the same cast, so the figure describes a moment, not a person.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- Trigram virtues (Shuogua, chapter 7)
- 震 moving, startling below; 艮 stopping, at rest above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- eldest son below, youngest son above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- feet and dragon below; hands and dog above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Wood below, Earth above. The Han assignment of 梅花易數, book 1, also used by Jing Fang; not stated as such in the Zhouyi sourced
- Inverse and opposite
- Upside down it is itself; every line flipped: 28 大過 Dà Guò, Great Excess sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 27, from 32° to 37.625° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Nourishment: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 頤 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “We must look at what we are seeking to nourish, and by the exercise of our thoughts seek for the proper aliment.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Thunder at the foot of a mountain; the superior man watches over his words and is temperate in eating and drinking.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 艮 above when the year, month and day leave 7 on eight, 震 below when the same total with the hour leaves 4.
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987)
- Takes the number for its gate 27 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Thunder under the mountain, the shape of an open mouth: what one takes in and what one feeds to others, with care in words and moderation in what one takes.
Claims about it
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Gate 27 of Human Design, at 32° to 37.625° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 27.
falseWhat the record shows: The wheel is Shao Yong's circle rotated by Ra Uru Hu in 1987 to 1989 so that hexagram 41 starts at 2° Aquarius. No Chinese source we found puts the hexagrams on degrees of the zodiac.
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Being born under 頤 Yí fixes a person's character.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: A modern reading with no source in the tradition. The Zhouyi has no birth hexagram; the cast reads a figure, not a person, and everyone born in the same lunar day and double hour shares it.
